Meet the Irish women shaping Norway’s peace and non-profit landscape

In 2024, the city of Bodø unveiled a statue dedicated to Tipperary woman, and long-time resident of Norway, Shirley Bottolfsen. Shirley was famous in Bodø for her one-woman annual Christmas appeal, which saw her appear on Norwegian national television and become a figure recognisable all over Norway for her charity work.

In recognition of her contribution to Norwegian civic life, Shirley was awarded the King’s Silver Medal of Merit in 2005. Shirley passed away in 2021, but her statue in the heart of Bodø ensures that her memory and legacy will live on for a long time to come.

While Shirley’s grassroots efforts were first and foremost to help the people of her adopted home of Bodø who were in need, her passion for helping people is one that reflects values that Ireland has become known for internationally: solidarity, respect for human rights, and peace.

Shirley moved to Norway in 1956, a time when few Irish people lived in the country. Today, we are proud to say that among the Irish community in Norway you can find many people who work in fields that embody many of the same values that led Shirley Bottolfsen to her recognition.

We wanted to find out what it was that drew them to this work, and what it meant to be Irish working in this field in Norway, the home of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Michelle Delaney, Communications Director at PRIO

Michelle Delaney, today Communications Director at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), began her career in the Irish magazine industry. “After a few years I was eager to explore a bit more of the world,” she says.

She joined the UN as a media officer in Sierra Leone just after the civil war ended. The work was pretty varied: one week she was helping run the national election centre, “the next I was producing an MTV film on blood diamonds with the Wu-Tang Clan”.

That role sparked a decade of travelling and working across the world for the UN – South Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Thailand, Myanmar and eventually at UN headquarters in New York. For family reasons she later moved to Oslo, and became the media adviser to Jan Egeland at the Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the leading voices in global humanitarian work.

For Michelle, whose father, uncles and grandfather all served as UN peacekeepers, working for peace seemed to come naturally. But Michelle notes that “one of the biggest challenges is getting people to care about crises unfolding far away, places they may never have heard of, affecting people they will never meet”.

She points out that “at PRIO, we publish the global battle-death figures every year, and every year the numbers reach a new record high. It becomes increasingly difficult to make people engage with those statistics. When the figures keep climbing, they risk becoming abstract, almost numbing.”

Claire McAree, Project Manager at the Nobel Peace Center in the heart of Oslo, is “motivated by the mix of social justice, community engagement, and art. I love creating exhibitions where people can engage with complex issues in different ways, be it through photography, painting, poetry,often in ways that are more soul-centered rather than purely intellectual. I believe that when we can connect with each other on this level, it opens the door to learning and breaking down barriers of misunderstanding and fear,” she says.

Claire’s perspective was shaped by her early experiences when she worked with a Peruvian NGO in Lima and with Women’s Aid in Dublin. Over time she became curious about how social issues and community engagement could be explored through art and culture: “That led me into exhibition-making and socially-engaged art, and eventually to my role at the Nobel Peace Center,” of which she says “leading the team that creates the annual Nobel Peace Prize exhibition is a privilege and a unique challenge[BCHOE1] .”

The challenge is “partly because of the very short timeframe. We have eight weeks to shape the whole exhibition: do the research and fact-checking, develop the concept, build the narrative, choose the artistic medium and design an experience that will leave visitors feeling connected to the issues behind the prize. Eight weeks is a very short time frame, the majority of other exhibitions I’ve made have at least a two year lead in!”

For Síle Sammon, originally from Co. Galway, the personal example of her family, and especially her father – who as well as local postmaster was President of the local Vincent De Paul – inspired her to follow a path to help others.

Síle’s strong sense of social justice is rooted in her experiences working in Cambodia, Myanmar, Somalia, Yemen, Lebanon, Laos, and Sierra Leone. Today, she is Country Portfolio Manager for Mozambique at Redd Barna (Save the Children Norway), having worked also as a Mine Action and Disarmament Advisor for Norwegian People’s Aid.

The desire to be engaged in the world is one that all three agree is shared by both Irish people and Norwegians, which may explain why they have found working here so rewarding.

As Síle notes: “When I travelled to various countries in Africa and Asia, you were always likely to find Irish aid organisations (Concern Worldwide, Trócaire and Goal) and Norwegian organisations (NRC, NPA, NCA) which I think speaks to the core of both countries psyche.

There is very much a strong sense of wanting to help in humanitarian settings which is evidenced in how long these NGOs have been in operation”.

This is something Michelle echoes, saying: “There’s a shared instinct for solidarity in both countries: Norwegians have a deep empathy for communities that have lived under oppression – an instinct that resonates strongly with Irish history and Irish perspectives.”

It’s a point that rings true for Claire, also, who concludes that our small size does not impede our ability to have an impact. Ireland and Norway share “a belief that even as small nations, we have a responsibility to contribute to global humanitarian efforts,” she says.